Data Privacy Day 2012: “Should Librarians Care About Privacy Anymore?” A Free Webinar & Event

In honor of Data Privacy Day 2012, the University of North Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science (SILS) is sponsoring a special program and webinar, “Should Librarians Care About Privacy Anymore?“ The program will take place this Friday, February 3, 2012 from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Eastern time in Peabody Hall, Room 08. The event will also be simulcast as a live webinar via Conference Streaming. There is no charge for admission.

The featured speaker is Barbara Jones, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. Jones argues that libraries must continue to care about privacy and serve as a model for the world on how libraries protect their… Read More »

Today is Data Privacy Day

January 28 marks the annual observance of Data Privacy Day. First held in 2007 by the Council of Europe as “Data Protection Day,“ the event has grown into a international observance that seeks to provide information about personal data rights and protections to consumers of all ages. The United States officially joined in the observance of Data Privacy Day in 2009 when the U.S. House of Representatives passed House Resolution HR 31, declaring January 28 National Data Privacy Day.

Data Privacy Day 2012: Youth and Privacy

This is the second of a series of posts celebrating Data Privacy Day 2012 , an international celebration designed to promote awareness about the many ways personal information is collected, stored, used, and shared, and to promote education about privacy practices that will enable individuals to protect their personal information.

Young people care about their privacy and reputation, and are always willing to try and consider new tools and information that help them protect their online reputation. Data Privacy Day 2012 has compiled online resources discussing privacy and youth and offers a Youth and Privacy Tipsheet, available online as a digital download.

Facebook's financial illusion-it's all ad revenues, dependent on consumers not knowing how social media marketing works

Facebook makes nearly all its money from advertising, including ad related revenues from the sales of virtual gaming products. It's no real economic miracle, as its fate depends ultimately on major global advertisers winning success from their Facebook-focused campaigns. Facebook's use of its member and friends data for an array of basically viral and peer-to-peer marketing strategies will ultimately create a strong backlash as regulators, privacy advocates and others peel back its facade. Facebook believes it has perfected social media marketing to create a seamless

DRM is to publishing as science was to Stalinism

My latest Publishers Weekly column is "Digital Lysenkoism," a look at the bizarre internal forces that causes people who work at publishers to defend DRM, even though they know it doesn't work. I also recently chatted with a big-six digital strategist, who explained to me how his employer would soon be sending out all of … [Read more]Read More »

Google Backs Off Privacy Policy Change for Federal Government

In response to growing concern about the impact of Google's proposed policy change on user privacy and cloud-computing services, the company said that its planned privacy changes will not apply to US federal agencies. A report from Safegov.org "Google’s New Privacy Policy Is Unacceptable and Jeopardizes Government Information in the Cloud" recommended that "Google immediately suspend the application of its new privacy policy to Google Apps For Government users." Google told POLITICO's Morning Tech "cloud contracts are crafted with 'narrow, specific obligations' on how data can be used and stored. And those data requirements in the cloud contracts trump the company's standard privacy policy."
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Retroactive Privacy Act exemptions could cost a US citizen his life

In his ruling this week in Hasbrouck v. CBP, Judge Seeborg of the US. District Court for the Northern District of California suggested that US citizens have no “rights” that would be prejudiced by applying newly-issued Privacy Act exemption rules to previously-made requests for government records. But a parallel case currently before the U.S. District Court [...]
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A Reasonableness Approach to Searches After the Jones GPS Tracking Case

Peter Swire writes, in part: The proposal here is that the answer lies in addressing what the Supreme Court in Delaware v. Prouse called “standardless and unconstrained discretion,”[5] and what Justice Sotomayor called “unfettered discretion” in her concurrence in Jones.[6] Supreme Court precedent contains powerful methods for limiting this sort of discretion, primarily in the second step of Fourth Amendment [...]
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Update: EU Asks Google to ‘Pause’ New Privacy Policy

Last week, Google announced changes in its privacy policies that will affect users of its services, such as search, Gmail, Google+ and YouTube. Advocates and legislators questioned the changes, saying that there were privacy issues, and criticized the Internet services giant (Congress pdf; archive pdf) for not including an opt-out provision; Google said that users who objected could stop using its [...]
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Friday Squid Blogging: Clothing that Keeps an Exercise Journal

It's called Squid.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered.

Bradley Manning to Face All Charges in Court-Martial

WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning is headed for a general court martial, according to the commander of the U.S. Army Military District of Washington in an announcement released late Friday.
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